Traveller PSDs

If you've been following my activity on Twitter, you may be aware that I've been drawing some Traveller RPG art, which is related to my Last Imperium art... I might migrate some of it into my own setting. I've also made a Traveller page on my site:

http://androidarts.com/Traveller/Traveller.htm

Attaching some of the PSDs. I use my usual work method, with a sketch / line art + shade layer, a warm colour balance layer, then the flat colours which I like to fade a bit to not overwhelm the line work or create a too strong of a silhouette against white paper. Sometimes I also use a level layer to tint the image to off white, and a saturation layer to pop things. The line art is colourized a bit here and there with a color brush. Some areas can look a bit muddy otherwise, like faces, coloured pants. I always do the blue sky / top light thing.

I've begun using the magic wand to pick the silhouettes for colouring... but since the sketches are kinda fuzzy it works so-so. I set a decent threshold, then contract the selection a bit. It's really quite time consuming to block in colours by hand so I'll take the sacrifice. Usually when the colour layer done, I have to adjust the shadows and line weight a lot as a line drawing looks very different when the silhouette comes into play. Usually I have to push drop shadows (faint shadows suddenly become lost in the colour block), and tone down lit top edges (since the colour alone now can define the edge of the form / silhouette).

These start out as mech pencil scribbles (often still visible), which are then cleaned up a bit. Using an uneven ground is a good way to make the random scribble poses kind of work in terms of balance. Drawing both feet flat on the ground kinda limits you, and it's not unrealistic that adventurers are out in the wild.

I don't draw very hirez due to limited storage space and CPU, and somehow working kinda rough and lowrez allows me to get rough shapes working faster without getting bogged down with detail.